Video expert calls for judicial review of program

Siri Hewavitharana

Internationally renowned expert in broadcast video systems and
Executive Director IPTV Systems Australia Siri Hewavitharana in a brief
interview with the Sunday Observer, said the British broadcasting
industry, which was respected and produced the best broadcast
technologists in the world, now going down the path that glorifies
terrorists was a disturbing issue.

Hewavitharana, who has exposed Channel 4’s digital manipulation of
pictures for its controversial ‘Killing Fields’ documentary, said the
program consists of fake videos that were digitally altered, fake stills
and a producer using false narratives that amounts to absolute
dishonesty on the part of the producer.

“I was a product of British broadcasting and my teachers were the
cream of British broadcasting. The company I worked for in London was
one of the top broadcast companies in the world with two Emmy Awards.
They produce amazing digital broadcast products used by all global
broadcasters. I was very proud of my teachers and my team and also the
fact that I was part of the technical team that produced the two
Emmy-winning programs,” he said.

Hewavitharana, former Head of CISCO’s global broadcast and digital
video practice and of Systems Engineering for Star TV Hong Kong,
explained one of the fake pictures in the video, that of a boy’s head
blown off and a pool of blood nearby.

He said the isolated pixel mapping indicates pixels that have been
manipulated using a digital paint brush to show blood.

He said the video and stills were digitally paintbrushed to show
blood from the boy’s face but the blood pixels do not match the
surroundings of the video. “This has never come from a mobile phone.
There are many other factors to prove the fake nature of the video. It
is an attempt to give fresh breath for terrorism”, he said.

Hewavitharana said Ch-4 has non linear editors such as AVID.

If they cared to use them, they would have seen the metadata layer
and the fake technical data. “The question is who did this digital
alteration; was it by the Ch-4 producers or by the terror group that
provided the fake video?”

The expert stressed the need for a judicial review of the video
footage, witnesses and the so-called journalists involved.